Oxygen is an essential gas that is absolutely necessary for human survival. Each person requires a steady dose of oxygen. When a person's oxygen saturation in his or her bloodstream is less than about ninety-one percent, he or she risks suffering from brain damage and respiratory arrest, among other ailments, including delerium, caused by the oxygen deprivation.
Receiving a steady dose of oxygen is problematic for people with respiratory problems, especially during sleeping hours. Various oxygen delivery devices have been introduced, including nasal cannulas and oxygen masks, both of which assist the person by supplying oxygen and, therefore, require him or her to expend less energy to breathe. However, both nasal cannulas and oxygen masks have many significant drawbacks, especially when worn for a prolonged period of time and in particular during sleeping hours.
Known oxygen masks cover both a person's nose and mouth and include a bag that fills up with oxygen (FIG. 4). When a person inhales while wearing a known mask, the mask exhibits suction, resulting in severe pressure and tightness around the person's face. The tightness causes extreme discomfort for people, especially during the sleeping hours, when, as a result of being in a dreamed state of mind, the mask wearer panics and believes that he or she is suffocating. This panic causes the person to remove the mask in order to obtain relief from the unbearable tightness and pressure caused by the mask. Unfortunately, when a person with respiratory problems removes the mask, he or she consequently does not receive enough oxygen and, accordingly, becomes delirious and suffers from respiratory arrest and, in some instances, death.
The risk of death is heightened by those people under the care and supervision of medical personnel, including nurses and respiratory therapists, who are forbidden by laws to use restraints to prevent a panicked person from removing an oxygen mask without a doctor's permission. Consequently, these medical personnel must physically restrain such persons with their own effects. In most instances, because the respiratory patient has become delirious as a result of the oxygen deprivation, he or she falsely believes that the nurse or respiratory therapist is attempting to hurt him or her and consequently fights back. Furthermore, there is usually a low ratio of medical personnel to respiratory patients in such facilities, especially during sleeping hours, thereby compounding the risk of death. This is because as one nurse or respiratory therapist is physically restraining a patient who has removed a mask in one room, he or she cannot attend to other patients in neighboring rooms who are also removing their oxygen masks and who consequently suffer and die as a result of removal of the known oxygen mask that caused the extreme discomfort that necessitated its removal. A need, therefore, exists for an oxygen delivery device that delivers a steady dose of oxygen to a person and that does not cause extreme discomfort when worn for a prolonged period of time, especially during sleeping hours.
Although known nasal cannulas are less restricting than oxygen support masks, nasal cannulas do not deliver oxygen to a person's mouth and, therefore, do not deliver an effective dose of oxygen when used alone. Further, known nasal cannulas cause discomfort when they do not (or cannot be adjusted to) properly fit an individual person's face. Therefore, a need exits for an oxygen delivery system that delivers a steady dose of oxygen to both a person's nasal and oral cavities and that is also adjustable so that it is capable of properly fitting a variety of different people's faces.